QuarkChain - The high-throughput Blockchain

QuarkChain Overview

QuarkChain is a new and promising Blockchain project that aims to enhance the scalability while guarantying the security and decentralization. To achieve a higher throughput rate than nowadays blockchains, QuarkChain uses sharding and cross-sharding on a second layer which not only can be scaled almost linear but also enables seamless cross-shard transactions for the quality of user experience. A simple account management with only one private key makes QuarkChain's smart wallet easy to use.

Quark Chain contains of two Blockchain layers. A root layer dedicated to confirming blocks from the sharding layer and for security against double spending attacks as well an elastic sharding layer with a list of minor Blockchain's (shards). Each shard processes a sub-set of all transactions independently. As the number of shards increases, shards can process more transactions. As a result, the system capacity increases as the number of shards increases.

QuarkChain's coin QKC is mineable

The goal of QuarkChain's collaborative mining is to design incentive mechanisms and difficulty algorithms so that hash powers are incentivized to distribute evenly among shards. This ensures that all shards are mined evenly and the system throughput increases as the number of shards increases. The root chain has over 50% of hash power over the whole network. This prevents double spending attacks.

QuarkChain's minor blockchains offer different rewards and difficulties. Miners can choose any Blockchain at an optimal price for their hash power. This creates an open market model. QuarkChain wants to design a marketing model, that could benefit all participants.

As a value carrier, transaction currency and contribution reward, the QKC token has an optimal use in QuarkChain's ecosystem.

Anti-centralized horizontal scalability expansion

QuarkChain allows multiple honest nodes to form a cluster of nodes to run as a super node. The cost for a super node is usually very high and only powerful market participants (like big companies) can run a super node. With the nodes cluster strategy, QuarkChain allows smaller participants to collaborate into a cluster of nodes that creates a super node without them having to purchase expensive machines. This enhances security by decentralizing the network.

Cross-sharding from day one

Many projects work on the sharding solution to increase their Blockchain transaction speed. Existing blockchains are difficult to upgrade. Because QuarkChain is a new Blockchain, it will be able to implement cross sharding from the very beginning. The throughput of cross-shard transactions could be scaled linearly as the number of shards increases.

Smart Contract

QuarkChain will support smart contracts via the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM). Most of the existing DApps built on top of EVM can be directly deployed on the QuarkChain platform.

Smart Wallet

The QuarkChain smart wallet will simplify account management. The user does not need to be aware of QuarkChain's underlying primary account (Address in default shard) and secondary account (all other shards). Most transactions will be initiated from the users primary account. Only if the user f.e. executes a smart contract by sending a cross-shard transaction, the balance gets transferred from the primary to the secondary account where the cross-shard transaction takes place. Should there be any leftover tokens in the second account, they will be automatically transferred to the users primary account. All shards in the smart wallet are managed by one private key.

Mobile Decentralized Applications (DApps2go)

Mobile based DApps are very limited today due to the low capacity of mobile networks which cannot handle Blockchain data flow. QuarkChain's infrastructure supports mobile DApps and its infrastructure is mobile oriented. QuarkChain will provide on-chain developer tools to create Android-friendly environment, making mobile DApp development as simple as possible.

QuarkChain only brings real business into the Blockchain world. Such businesses must have strong needs for a high throughput block chain. Social networks, online storage, high frequency trading, financial payments, gaming or sharing economy platforms will find a perfectly designed environment to full fill their needs. QuarkChain can also be used for IoT, Big Data or AI.

Final verdict

QuarkChain is a highly anticipated new Blockchain project and its pre-sale has been many times oversubscribed. With their upcoming public ICO many people are willing to participate in the crowd-funding event. QuarkChain has an all-star team, good token metrics, a pleasing hard cap, first class product and a working test net by the time of their ICO. QuarkChain is one of the most anticipated projects in 2018 so far.

Despite that the project could have raised all funds it needs for its development via private sale, the team has decided to not cancel their public ICO. This shows, that QuarkChain values decentralization and its community high. In my opinion this is a project to keep following for the long term. Their main net will be live in Q4 2018. Thanks to QuarkChain's collaborative mining approach, everyone will be able to mine efficiently QKC rewards with their GPU's.